Why are girls always under more
pressure? I often asked this question to myself as I feel like I did put
unnecessary pressure on myself just because I was a girl. There are many
factors behind it but today I want to emphasize on how the world seems to put
more pressure on girls to look beautiful in terms of appearance. Media plays a
big role in showing that the ideal woman is one who possesses a set of criteria
such as specific height and weight, slim body, loose and long hair, etc.
Unfortunately, these ideas make a lot of girls feel insecure of how they look
and this can have a major negative impact especially when these thoughts hit
during teenage years.
Speaking of myself and I know
there are many girls in this world who can relate to this or who have been
through this, I will admit I was unhappy of how I looked during my teenage
years and I was even afraid at that time that I’d never be able to look
beautiful for the rest of my life. As this was something I was not comfortable
sharing with anyone, I had to deal with it on my own and I remember convincing
myself that time should make everything alright. I surely wasted time wondering
why I can’t look pretty as the average girls around me but these insecurities
eventually pushed me to change my thoughts on what beautiful means.
Media has a certain way of
presenting women and when it comes to selling a product, women are often used
as inappropriate avatars. The reality is also that such campaigns where women
are shown sexy are made on purpose in order to attract as many customers as
possible. We all know that this is a marketing strategy which allows many
business to make profit. Good for them but what about the decrease in girls and
women’s self-esteem? The effects of such ads could be either direct or indirect
and nonetheless, girls and women are affected. To add more, publicities
regarding women clothing are also worse according to me. The mannequins are
usually shown tall, slim, posing in a suggestive manner, revealing their best
curves but that’s really not how most women are in real life. Women have better
things to do than just look sexy and seductive. As a result, a lot of females
feel like they’re not good looking enough. To add a real life example, there
was always one female in my environment until today who felt insecure of her
overall appearance and I strongly feel that none of them deserved to feel like
that; they all had the prettiest hearts.
On the other hand, I support
companies like Dove who come up with ads to increase women’s self-esteem. They
project the idea that if you take care of yourself, then you should feel
beautiful as opposed to look beautiful. And this is how I learned the
difference between feeling and looking beautiful. Don’t deny it but when you
look good from the outside, you indeed feel good in the inside, right? But
that’s easy to do. Shouldn't you feel good inside first and then make that
reflect outside? This sounds tough and I completely agree with you. Believe it
or not but this is something I took a lot of time to understand and apply in
real life. It’s in fact a work-in-progress task for me and I see it as a
challenge because just looking beautiful from the outside doesn't make me
entirely happy.
As the famous line says, “beauty lies
in the eye of the beholder”. What may be beautiful to you won’t be necessarily
beautiful to others. I think many people limit the definition of beautiful to
an outer appearance of a human being. Unfortunately, such people are narrow-minded
and they are missing out on the beautiful attributes of a person’s inner self.
It’s their loss and you shouldn't fall in the trap. Outer good looks don’t last
forever because we all age and grow old. This means that if you feel good
inside of you only because of how attractive you dress up, you won’t be a happy
person for too long. Either you’ll develop some serious confidence issues or
you will fake to be happy when deep inside of yourself, you’re not happy anymore
because you've lost your physical charm. You may go to a far extreme to achieve
an artificial beauty, and therefore feel the need to spend excessively in order
to get that appearance. On the contrary, the inner beauty of a person will
always last. People with an inner beauty might not have the looks of a fashion
model but the way they smile, the way they express themselves and how they treat
others are attributes which make it up for the lack of their external beauty.
It’s important to have an inner beauty because that’s something we can have
control over for the rest of our lives. Nobody can take that away from us and
no age can kill that. As a rule of thumb, keep in mind that outer beauty is
what makes you look interesting but inner beauty is what keeps you interesting.
Another important point I wanted
to mention is that we should learn to live with our imperfections. We are human
beings with flaws, so don’t focus on the attractive physical traits that you
don’t have just because the whole world believes that an average woman should
have some particular physical traits. Instead, get to know your best physical
features and lift yourself up for them. Women have tons of ways of looking
appealing such as: styling their hair, putting make-up on their face, getting
their nails done, wearing perfumes to smell good, wearing stockings to make
their legs look shinier, putting on high heels to make their legs look longer,
and the list goes on. All of these feminine things take time, so ladies, by the
time you do all of this, you can use some of that time to work toward an
attractive personality and it will be more worth it because your efforts won’t
be wasted on the long term. Sure, you can apply some of the above ways to
enhance your looks but don’t over do it. Learn to love yourself from the inside
out and don’t be afraid of your physical flaws. You don’t need to reveal them
to anyone anyway. Don’t try to seek the wrong attention by presenting yourself
all dolled-up, hiding all your flaws and/or revealing too much skin to achieve
the looks the medias are imposing on women, but rather present yourself to earn
respect because this world needs more women of the latter case. This should
then bring much more peace in a lot of girls and women’s minds who are around
us.
To sum up, it is up to you to
figure out what are the best traits in your personality, feel confident about
them. If you are being true to yourself, then you will
feel beautiful from the inside and look beautiful from the outside. Some are
naturally attractive and I believe they are lucky to be blessed with that
feature. However, those who don’t think they are attractive shouldn't lose hope
because this is something one can think about and work on. Nothing is
impossible. Sometimes the insecurities we had or have are there for a reason;
they encourage and influence us to take some action so that we try to overcome
them and eventually feel better on the inside.
